Ack.

The only reason to do this in a bathroom is to make sure nobody ever uses it.

 

Especially this.

I found another one:

This is . . . ack. And these aren’t anywhere near bad

I don’t much care for subway tiles, either. Or not-quite-almost-black paint.

Difference between Ford and Kavanaugh.

It’s small, but here’s what you need to know: Ford’s on the left, Kavanaugh’s on the right. Blue line? Question answered directly. Red line? Evasion.

Here’s the original article, with an expandable version of the chart.

 

Look at other things.

Saw this on fb this morning:

František Kupka, The Yellow Scale.” Do you see “Portrait of Adelle Bloch-Bauer”? I do.

I did a google search for images, and found this –

“Mme. Kupka Among Verticals.”

Kupka lived 1841-1957. If you google him, you’ll see him working through many schools, including Synchromist and the early moden era expressionism. One more –

“Printemps Cosmique”.

Remember when we used to warn people of an image-heavy blog post? So long ago.

Also, fuck. Rosenstein just resigned.

Seasonal affective disorder.

There’s a place in me where dry leaves race across pavement out on the edges of the streetlight, where the world is made of noise, wind blowing and branches waving and the moon gasps out between clouds. Tomorrow will be three minutes and change shorter than today. If you think of heading down to the marina to see the sunset at 7:40, you’re already too late. It’s getting dark.

Don’t talk to me about D3. I’m taking shit-tons, and it’s doing a world of good, except for maybe making me wired a little hot. Being out in the sun might help. Going to the gym might help. Stay low, stay out of sight, out towards the edges, keep a low profile. I don’t think I’m good company right now. I don’t trust myself in company right now.

Right now, this minute, I’m trying to wrap my giant chess-club brain around it, hold this mood like a tool. What can I use it for? Maybe it’s nothing, maybe I just have too wild an imagination. Maybe this is just habit.

Or maybe it’s fall.

 

 

 

Something you should read.

It’s a Twitter thread by Will Bunch, on . . . fighting the good fight. On what was on the tv the year after the Summer of Love. On Bobbie Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, and wondering if the cops and the guns were going to come after you, or maybe me.

Maybe this is the start of the big division. Or maybe just when it got so visible.

The whole world is still watching.

About Daughter.

Or actually, why doesn’t she do this one thing that I must do (about every 6 months)?

Mercury is about to go forward again, and all the weirdness Must. Stop. Please. This retrograde has been soooo rough.

I’m at work, behind the counter, a space less than three feet wide, and maybe five deep. A fellow employee is standing next to me, trying to print something on the printer whose paper feed through the drawer has failed, so you have to hand-feed it one sheet at a time. Bent over, because the thing has a short cord and you can’t pull it out to get to it. This fellow employee had chastised me yesterday for getting so angry with the damn thing, and so when he yelled out FUCK I laughed and said, “customers, dear.” So he’s there, and he’s a big guy, and he comes with a dog, whose favorite place is behind the counter anyway, and Must be there with Master.

I managed to put one of the phone lines at work on conference call, yesterday, apparently to a black hole or something, because it was dead silent. I’m trying to get the conference call to end, when another person comes in and want to use the upstairs printer, which now requires a specific combination of chants and burnt offerings to work. She can’t get it to work, it’s yelling at her, so I switch problems with her: she can look at the phone, and I’ll perform the ritual sacrifice necessary for the printer. I solve her problem and come back downstairs – and am met with SCRREEEEEEECHHHH. One or both of us had our phone on speaker, with the dead space of the conference call.

I didn’t know you could get feedback from a cordless phone.

So she’s doing her thing, he’s done with his thing, and I’m left with the unending conference call. When all else fails, unplug things, right? I chicken out on pulling the power cord, and opt for unplugging the phone line. I wait about ten seconds, and plug it back in. It’s still saying conference call. We’ve got two lines, so I just wander off and forget about it –

For four hours, at which point it occurs to me we haven’t had any phone calls. Oops hahaha. So I plug the phone line into the right jack. We have dial tone! And the conference call has ended.

Anyway It’s been rough, and I’ve been good, rolling along for the most part. We won’t talk about seriously considering ramming my car repeatedly into the gas pump that decided I was not allowed to get gas until I went in and got the guy and he came out and “hey everything’s fine!” (I think it was a solid couple of hours before I left that train of thought. Would it have been worth going to prison for a few years? Maybe.)

So actually, today was . . . better, easing up on the two steps forward 13 back climb the ladder jump across the abyss outrun the tiger mode. I come home, have dinner, mope and sulk till I run across an Adele song, and then as long as I’m at youtube, a couple more songs, then omg Fleetwood Mac’s Chain* turn it up and squeeze the headphones tight so the drum is pounding in the middle of your skull!

And I realize Daughter doesn’t do that. To the best of my knowledge. Maybe she has better headphones. Or maybe she does it when I’m not home, considering the number of times I’ve yelled at her about her headphone volume.

Or maybe she doesn’t have Mercury retrogrades in her world.

*You don’t have to listen to Fleetwood Mac. I won’t judge. Pick your own.

 

Standing on shoulders.

Left, van Gogh, 1886.        Right, that spanish ghoul, 1907.

I dunno. Is it just that the human body can only adopt a finite series of poses (without going to extremes), or what? And also, with van Gogh’s model looking down we get a sense of innocence (read naked) as opposed to ghoul guy’s fear and despair (nude, under duress).

I suppose I should research the ghoul more, so that I can use facts instead of the gut feeling that he was a creepy fucker. I could also think more on naked/nude women in art.

There’s a line in The Dispossessed by Le Guin, where the hero talks about all the sexy curved lines in the spaceship, with no women on board. He says something like “they put their women into their furniture.” In The Creative Will, by Wright, talks about women being capable only of surface decoration, while men were about construction.

I might be subconsciously researching that one.

TURMOIL!!!!!

We’re probably going to move in the next few months, hopefully to where we are currently aimed. I’m going through ALL THE THINGS! because nothing says sanity like clinging to your past. Or something.

So getting rid of things has a mirror-image of keeping things, so I’m trying to figure out what parts of me are essential and/or good and which were foolish outbursts of youthful enthusiasm or desperate attempts to be something I’m not. Because moving is stressful, so why not throw existential angst into the mix? You didn’t really want to sleep, did you?

Drawing: yes. I think the sheer magnitude of pencils and erasers and sketchpads is a clear indicator.

Watercolor: yes. I have been carrying around that Winsor Newton travel paintbox for 40 years.

Acrylics: Burn. Them. Kill them with fire and salt the earth after. Okay, donate them somewhere. But ohgodno.

Oils: Get to come along, I think, even though I can’t work with them because they smell but they are so wonderful and sensuous. And I have a how-to book here somewhere . . .

Clothes: I know, it’s stupid, but I am so keeping that pair of men’s 501 jeans with the 28-inch waist because I will lose those 50 pounds. I will. (I did go through and get rid of quite a bit. but not those jeans.)

Dishes: sigh. They’re my friends. They have to come with. Yes. I feel silly.

Wineglasses: ditto. I almost – almost – convinced myself to ditch them. I’ve been trying for years, and I’m almost ready.

I can’t even bring myself to think about all the fiber categories. I have ditched some obviously ill-advised cloth, and some yarn. Give me credit.  And the woman who gave me three rigid-heddle looms called this week and was wondering if she could get any of them back. Yes! Save me from my greed!

Metalworking: not ready to admit defeat. I’ve made some stupid mistakes in equipment purchases, and there are other problems – in my designs, in my bench, in the materials I have accumulated. But not yet.

Books. This was so sad. I gave away or recycled a ton. But I kept poetry, philosophy, and art history. I’m getting good at figuring out which books are best on an e-reader, and stocking up on those. Classics are good. Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice, Moby Dick!

So, I am sorting, and I think that’s good, even if I haven’t gotten to where I want to be. Total failure in the category of Buddhist simplicity. But I’m getting there.

A friend suggested putting everything into storage, and then setting it on fire. Ha. Haha. Hahahahaha.

Hm.

Solidarność.

I’m working up a primer for a young Democrat, say, thirty five, forty years of history. Ratfucking, Roger Stone, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy and its primary operators, Brooks Brothers Riot. Polish revolution. Reagan and the Berlin Wall. OMG Gorbachev! Lots of things.

Any ideas?

I can post whatever I want.

Having abandoned Facebook, I need a place. So, what used to go to Facebook will come here. Hopefully more often.

Went to a summer street thing. There were shiny shiny cars.

Perfect day, Big fluffy clouds, over there not here. Talked to friends. Perfect day.